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James Corbett, Inside World Football

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suffered in the run-up to
crucial elections in early 2016 what amounted to at least a symbolic defeat when
state-run television banned Iran’s most popular soccer program from running an
interview with his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on soccer and
politics.

Amid confusion about the reason for the ban, Iranians
worried that not only was their beloved, already highly politicized sport being
dragged further into the country’s power struggle but also that government-controlled
television was taking sides in a partisan struggle.

Iranian media reported that Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting (IRIB), the country’s broadcast authority, had banned Mr. Zarif’s
appearance because of his liberal views and the fact that his appearance on the
soccer show might brand him as a leader in the mould of nationalist president
Mohammed Mossadegh, who was toppled in 1953 in a US and British-backed coup.

“Iran's soccer diplomacy: ‘anything goes’ in fight for
parliament seats,” said one headline referring to polling in February to elect
both the Islamic republic’s legislature as well as its Assembly of Experts, the
forum that appoints the country’s spiritual leader. The assembly, which is
elected for a period of eight years, could well be the first in 26 years to
appoint a new spiritual and political leader with 76-year old Ayatollah Ali
Hosseini Khamenei believed to be suffering from prostate cancer.

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate who
headed the assembly until 2009 said
in a reference to Mr. Khamenei’s health that the council had recently “appointed
a group to list the qualified people that will be put to a vote (in the
assembly) when an incident happens.”

He said Iran was “getting ready for determining its fate for
years to come" with February’s elections for parliament and the assembly. Mr.
Khamenei has rejected attempts in recent months by Rouhani to limit the
assembly’s ability to bar moderates from standing as candidates.

Efforts by hardliners with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps (IRGC) in the lead to control soccer underline the importance of the
pitch as a battleground in the struggle for Iran’s future in the wake of the
nuclear agreement with Iran and the expected lifting of stringent United
Nations sanctions that Western nations hope will boost Mr. Rouhani in the
elections.

The significance of soccer has been heightened by Iran’s
poor international performance as well as allegations of match-fixing scandals
that have forced the guard to justify its involvement in the sport.

In a recent interview with sports magazine Tamashagaran Emrooz
(Today's Spectators), Guards commander Azizallah Mohammedi, a former board member
of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) argued that
the military group’s involvement in soccer had grown from the fact that some of
its members had played soccer in the past. He said they had become soccer
managers not as part of a Guards strategy but because of the qualifications and
skills they brought to the table.

Mohammed Dadkan, who served as FFIRI president from 2002 to
2006, however dismissed Mr. Mohammedi’s portrayal in an interview in August. “Managers in the world of football world are
corrupt. Unfortunately, people who know nothing about football are involved in
this sport - managers from the Guards and the Law Enforcement Forces," Mr.
Dadkan said.

IGRC commanders have served at various times as head of
Persepolis FC, one of Iran and Asia’s top clubs while Lotfollah Forouzandeh
Dehkordi, a guard commander and former vice-president under Rouhani’s hard-line
predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a member of its board.

Fajr Sepasi FC, a club in Shiraz owned by The Organization
for Mobilization of the Oppressed or Basij, a voluntary militia associated with
the guards, is directed by Colonel Zohrab Qanbari Mahardou.

Brigadier-General Gholam-Asgar Karimian is chairman of Tractor
Sazi FC, a top flight club in Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, whose
supporters have protested in recent years against the government’s
environmental policy and at times raised Azeri nationalist slogans. The club’s
president is former Guard Saeed Abbassi while another commander, Mostafa
Ajorlou, the guards’ former head of physical training, is a member of its
board.

Traktor Sazi is owned for 70 percent by the city’s
state-owned tractor company, which in turn is owned by Mehr-e Eqtesad-e Iranian
Investment Company that was sanctioned by the US Treasury as a subsidiary of
Mehr Bank, an IGRC financial institution. The remain 30 percent by the Defence
Ministry’s by Kosar Financial Institution.

Mr. Ajorlou, wh en he headed Steel Azin FC before joining
the Traktor Sazi board, tried to sack top Iranian player Ali Karimi for
allegedly not fasting during Ramadan and questioning the commander’s decisions.

Azar news, a news agency operated by the National Resistance
Organization of Azerbaijan (NROA), a coalition of opposition forces dominated
by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a group that was tainted when it moved its
operations in 1986 to Iraq at a time that Iraq was at war with Iran, this month
leaked a letter allegedly written by
General Karimian detailing how Traktor Sazi could be used to unite Azeris
against what the general termed “racist and separatist groups.”

The letter said the groups were campaigning for a “study the
mother tongue day.” It suggested that the mother tongue referred to was Talysh,
a dying northwest Iranian language that is still spoken by at most a million
people in the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern Azerbaijan.

The letter implied that the groups General Karimian was
concerned about were Azeris separatists, Islamists and Turkish Alevis, a sect
viewed as heretical by orthodox Islam that accounts for up to 20 percent of
Turkey’s populations.

“Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant
insulting slogans. They imitate the sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are
historically derided as stupid and stubborn. I remember incidents going back to
the time that I was a teenager,” said a long-standing observer of Iranian
soccer.

As a result, stadia in which Traktor Sazi Tabriz FC play are
repeatedly the venue for protests demanding greater rights for Iran’s Azeri
minority. During one clash in 2013 in Teheran’s Azadi stadium with the
capital’s storied Persepolis FC, Traktor Sazi supporters unfurled a banner
saying in English: “South Azerbaijan isn’t Iran,” a reference to East
Azerbaijan that borders on Azerbaijan.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

International trade unions have stepped up pressure on Qatar
with a series of demands, a majority of which the Gulf state could implement
without having to reform its autocracy or threaten the privileged position of
its citizenry who account for a mere 12 percent of the population and fear that
change could cost them control of their culture and society.

The demands in a report by the
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) that also include calls for
changes that would challenge autocratic rule, come at a time that world soccer
body FIFA could become obliged to more forcefully pressure Qatar to move beyond
baby steps it has already taken towards speedy implementation of far-reaching
reform of its kafala or sponsorship system that puts employees at the mercy of
their employers.

Many of the ITUC demands are likely to be on FIFA’s list if
it implements recommendations to incorporate UN human rights guidelines in all
its procedures, processes and decision-making. FIFA has requested a Harvard
University professor to present it by March with a report on how to adopt the
guidelines.

The ITUC report and FIFA’s potentially greater role come as
pressure on Qatar is mounting with legal investigations into the integrity of
its successful 2022 World Cup bid. A Swiss judicial investigation focusses exclusively
on the Qatari bid as well as Russia’s winning of the hosting rights for the
2018 World Cup, while US attorney general Loretta Lynch recently expressed hope
that Qatar would cooperate with a Department of Justice investigation into FIFA
that has already led to the indictment of some 40 officials and entities.

Hassan al-Thawadi, the secretary general of Qatar’s 2022
Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, said Qatar has yet to be contacted
by Swiss or US authorities.

Theo Zwanziger, the former FIFA executive committee member
who was in charge until last May for monitoring Qatari progress towards labour
reform, has meanwhile lost confidence in the Gulf state’s sincerity.

Mr. Zwanziger, who has been sued by Qatar for libel after he
described the Gulf state as a “cancerous growth on world football,” said Qatari
labour reforms were “a sham.” He called for depriving Qatar of its World Cup
hosting rights and a fan boycott in protest against the Gulf state’s violations
of human rights.

In its report, the ITUC demanded Qatar begin reform of
kafala by eliminating exit visas and giving workers the right to change jobs,
authorize contracts between employers or reputable recruitment companies and
employees, and introduce a national minimum wage, a company grievance procedure
and an independent labour court.

Implementation of these demands would not challenge the
fundament’s of Qatar’s family rule political structure compared to other ITUC
demands such as the trade unions’ insistence on worker representation through
elected representatives and the right to collective bargaining. The ITUC,
however, stopped short in its report of demanding abolition of kafala or the
formation of independent trade unions.

Qatar by moving on ITUC’s non-political demands, most of
which could be implemented quickly, would significantly counter mounting
pressure and perceptions that it is not serious about making good on pledges for
reform. Qatari moves so far fall far short of the Gulf state’s initial
promises.

Significant segments of Qatari society oppose labour reform
out of fear that it would open a Pandora’s Box to demands for more political and
cultural rights by the Gulf state’s majority non-Qatari population.

Fears in the business community that abolishment of the exit
visa would potentially enable expatriates who manage Qatari businesses to
abscond with company funds could easily be assuaged with the introduction of a
government guarantee modelled on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC) in the United States that guarantees deposits in US banks. Despite the
drop in global commodity prices and a projected budget deficit of $12.77
billion in 2016, Qatar would be capable of absorbing the cost of a minimum
wage.

The ITUC report put foreign companies involved in the
construction in Qatari projects, including ones related to the World Cup, on
the spot by accusing them of exploiting underpaid workers that they in the
trade unions’ words use as "modern-day slaves.” The report asserted that workers
building the Khalifa International Stadium were earning $1.50 an hour.

The report estimated that “$15 billion profit will be made
by companies working in Qatar on infrastructure… Every CEO operating in Qatar
is aware that their profits are driven by appallingly low wage levels -- wages
that are often based on a system of racial discrimination -- and that these
profits risk safety, resulting in indefensible workplace injuries, illnesses
and deaths," the report quoted ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow as
saying.

Speedy and serious moves towards labour reform would not
only strengthen Qatar’s hand in fending off ITUC’s more political demands but
also hand it a needed public diplomacy success at a time that the Gulf state
has on balance taken a public relations beating.

News about the World Cup has been dominated by questions
about the integrity of the Qatari bid and criticism of the Gulf state’s labour
regime. Add to that reporting on the recent blocking of an article critical of
Saudi Arabia’s human rights record on the main websites of the state-owned Al
Jazeera television network in a bid not to offend Qatar’s big brother.

Further contributing to Qatar’s woes, is a report by a
senior professor from Northwestern University, which prides itself on its
journalism program, that concluded that lack of academic freedom deprived the
university of any justification to maintain its campus in the Gulf state.

“Should we pull out? Yes, if we can’t be assured that
students and faculty can investigate and report what they want without fear of
arrest or expulsion. The education of Qatar women — the daughters of
millionaires — and other Middle Eastern elites (worthwhile as it may be), is
not an essential mission of Northwestern University,” said art historian Stephen
F. Eisenman.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

The escalating Turkish-Russian crisis following Turkey’s
downing in November of a Russian war plane promises to spill onto European
soccer pitches with FC Lokomotiv Moscow set to play Fenerbahce SK, notorious
for its fiery fan base, in a Europa League match.

With Russia seeking to punish Turkey with punitive economic
and sporting sanctions and Russian President Vladimir Putin refusing this week to
meet his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the expected clash between
the two teams as well as between fans is likely to not only raise tempers in
both countries.

It will also demonstrate once more the inextricable
relationship between sports and politics at a time that world soccer body FIFA
unwittingly is putting the incestuous ties between the two high on its agenda
by seeking advice on how to embed United Nations guidelines on human rights
into its processes, procedures and decision-making.

Ignoring Mr. Putin’s snub, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu said he was looking forward to the February matches between Lokomotiv
and Fenerbahce.

"The Turks and Russians who will fill the stadiums here
and in Russia are not adversaries, and still less enemies. If the match is
played in a gentlemanly spirit and helps reduce the tensions between the
countries, then something positive will come from a draw that could seem
negative," Mr. Davutoglu told A-Haber TV.

Turkish fans have a tendency to pick their own battles
rather than take into account their government’s interests. Fans, who carry
their Turkish nationalism on their sleeve, played a key role in mass
anti-government protests in 2013.

The Lokomotiv-Fenerbahce clash could prove to be the first
of more confrontations on European pitches if both Turkey and Russia progress
in qualifiers for Euro 2016. "We already hit them in the air and now on
the turf -- wait for us, Lokomotiv Moscow," said Turkish soccer fan Huseyin Uysal on Twitter.

The tensions and the reputation of Turkish fans as Europe’s scariest
soccer enthusiasts will not only raise concerns about crowd control but also
fears that stadia where the two teams battle it out on the pitch could be
targets for jihadist attacks.

Fears of clashes between Turkish and Russian fans persuaded
Russian soccer authorities to recently council supporters of FC Zenit Saint Petersburg
supporters not to travel to Belgium for the team’s European Champions League
match against KAA Gent because of the Belgian town’s large Turkish community.

Islamist fans shocked when in November they twice shouted
Allahu Akbar, God is Great, during moments of silence to commemorate the victims
of the Islamic State attack in Paris held at the beginning of two matches. One
of the Paris targets was a friendly between France and Germany at Paris’ Stade
de France that French President Francois Hollande was attending.

Russia, slated to host the 2018 World Cup, had already
demonstrated its political control of soccer immediately after the downing in
November of the Russian plane with the country’s sports ministry banning clubs
from hiring Turkish players and ordering Russian clubs to cancel winter training
sessions in Turkey that they had planned.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said that any future
World Cup-related contracts would not be awarded to Turkish construction
companies but that existing commitments would not be affected. "They won't
be here in the future but at the moment they have contracts and these will not
be looked into," Mr. Mutko said.

The bans as well as some refusals to play Turkish sports clubs
may however already be backfiring and handing Turkey at least some small
victories in what promises to be extended chilly relations with Russia.

Turkey is counting that its sporting points will translate
into political victories as Russia becomes ever more bogged down in the Syrian
quagmire rather than emerging as Mr. Putin had hoped as the saviour who
defeated extremist political violence. Like the more than one-year old US air
campaign against the Islamic State, Russian military hardware has hardly dented
Islamist opposition to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite
Moscow’s ability to coordinate with Syrian ground forces.

Mr. Mutko, a former chairman of the St. Petersburg team who
doubles as head of the Russian Football Union (RFU) and a member of FIFA’s
executive committee, admitted this week that Russia had made a mistake by stopping
volleyball clubs from travelling to Turkey for European championship matches. Two
Russian teams were handed technical defeats as punishment for not playing the
Turkish games despite their insistence that security concerns had prevented
them from going to Turkey.

In rare Russian praise for Turkey since the downing of the
jet, Mr. Mutko appeared to be making an about face by stating that "The
Turkish side is capable of providing security and there were never any problems
in this regard. If they were unable to host tournaments of such level, the
international organizations would have never given them the rights to do it,"
Mr. Mutko said.

FIFA has suggested that Russian soccer could be violating
the world body’s rules and regulations if it decisions proved to be politically
influenced. "FIFA will monitor the situation and any potential issues on a
case-by-case basis, should there be any appearance of a breach of FIFA statutes
or regulations,” a FIFA spokesperson said.

Mr. Mutko’s dual position as a member of Mr. Putin’s Cabinet
and head of the RFU makes a mockery of FIFA’s assertion that sports and
politics are separate. They also make a mockery of FIFA’s alleged policing to
ensure that the two don’t mix and underline the need to acknowledge rather than
deny a relationship that is unbreakable.

Turkey’s Russian soccer and sports travails were not earning
it a great deal of empathy in far flung places like Argentina. Argentinian `soccer
club Racing Club de Avellaneda refused a Turkish Airlines offer for sponsorship
while another team, CA San Lorenzo de Almagro, turned down a similar offer from
Azerbaijan, a Turkic republic with close ties to Turkey. The two clubs cited
repression of dissent and freedom of expression in both Turkey and Azerbaijan
as reasons for their rejection of the offers.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Ridden by the worst corruption scandal in its history, world
soccer body FIFA is breaking new ground by seeking to put United Nations
guidelines for human rights at the centre of its activities.

If fully implemented, the move would not only set a precedent
for other international sports associations but could also have far-reaching
consequences for FIFA’s future selection of World Cup hosts, current tournament
hosts Russia and Qatar, and the eligibility of various members of the executive
boards of the group and its regional soccer federations.

The move would also put centre stage the relationship
between politics and sports in general and soccer in particular. With human
rights inextricably linked to politics, the initiative makes it more difficult,
if not impossible, for FIFA to maintain its position that sports and politics
are separate.

Denial of the incestuous relationship between the two has
allowed FIFA and other international sports associations to enable autocracies
and violators of human rights to use the World Cup and other tournaments to
launder their reputations, distract attention from alleged abuse and
suppression of human rights and basic freedoms, and project themselves
favourably on the international stage.

The proof of FIFA’s sincerity in becoming the first
international sports federation to make human rights an integral part of its
processes, procedures and decisions will lie in how it applies the principles.

FIFA’s decision to seek external help in adopting human
rights principles as part of its DNA is remarkable given the group’s past
support for autocracies and flouting of moral and ethical standards. FIFA
moreover has an abysmal track record in following external advice it
commissioned on how best to reform the deeply troubled organization.

FIFA’s sincerity is likely to be put to the test from the
day the UN principles are formally adopted with the hosts of both the 2018 and
2022 World Cups, Russia and Qatar, accused of systematic violations of human
rights, and some members of the executive committees of the group as well as of
regional soccer confederations facing unanswered questions about their own
human rights record or that of the organizations they represent.

Much will depend on a report FIFA commissioned by Harvard international
affairs and human rights professor John Ruggie, a former UN Secretary-General
special representative for business and human rights. Mr. Ruggie is scheduled
to deliver his report in March on how FIFA can best embed the UN’s
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in everything it does.

Mr. Ruggie’s report is due just after FIFA’s extraordinary
congress in February that is set to elect a new president to succeed Sepp
Blatter, who after 40 years with the group, 17 of which he served at the helm,
has been suspended on suspicion of corruption.

Scores of FIFA and other soccer executives have been
indicted on corruption charges in the United States while Switzerland is
looking into the integrity of the awarding of the Russia and Qatar World Cups.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said earlier this month that she hoped that
Qatar would cooperate with her department’s ongoing investigation that has so
far focussed on wrongdoing in the Americas.

The investigations focus on financial transgressions rather
than political corruption, which is harder to tackle in legal terms without a
structure that governs the relationship between politics and sports.

Under the guidelines that would change with FIFA having to
take a far more forceful stand on issues like labour rights in Qatar and gay
rights in Russia as well as having to take a more detailed look at human rights
allegations against Bahraini FIFA executive committee member and Asian Football
Confederation chief Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a frontrunner in the
world body’s presidential election – all issues that are political in nature
and tied to the politics of the various countries.

FIFA has so far been wishy washy in its criticism of Qatar’s
kafala or sponsorship system that puts employees at the mercy of their
employers. Significantly improved labour standards adopted by several Qatari
institutions, including the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy,
have yet to be enshrined in national legislation and stop short of giving
migrant workers, who constitute the majority of the Qatari population, full
basic rights.

FIFA for example failed to follow the advice of Theo
Zwanziger, a former German soccer executive, who was responsible for monitoring
Qatari progress on labour reform before surrendering his FIFA executive
committee seat in May, that Qatar be held to deadlines.

Mr. Zwanziger had called for sanctioning of Qatar if it
failed to establish by May an independent commission that would oversee labour
reform. A report commissioned by Qatar by British-based law firm DLA Piper had
proposed the oversight mechanism. Qatar has yet to act on the advice.

"Unfortunately, almost nothing has happened until
today. I strongly doubt the will to change something of the Qataris," Mr.
Zwanziger said at the time. Qatar has sued Mr. Zwanziger for libel for saying
that the Gulf state was a “cancer on world football.”

FIFA has shied away from passing judgement on Mr. Salman,
who has denied allegations based on extensive reporting by the state-owned
Bahrain News Agency (BNA) that serves exclusively as a channel for official
government pronouncements that he was involved in the identification of some
200 athletes and sports executives who were penalized for their alleged
participation in a popular uprising in 2011.

Some of the athletes, including two national soccer team
players, were tortured at the time. Mr. Salman, who was the then head of the
Bahrain Football Association (BFA), has never denied the abuse nor condemned
it.

In his most explicit statement to date, Mr. Salman recently
denied any involvement, saying that the committee to identify the athletes and
executives he was said by BNA to have headed had never been established.
Similarly, the players who spoke about their abuse four years ago and have
since remained silent recently denied their earlier statements in interviews
organized by Mr. Salman’s presidential campaign.

FIFA has opened the door to making history with its
commissioning of Mr. Ruggie and expected adoption of the UN guidelines. It will
be up to the group to set the example by not only applying the principles to
future decisions and initiatives but also by applying them to major current
issues.

The guidelines, according to Mr. Ruggie, would oblige FIFA
to “apply maximum leverage” to address existing human rights issues and “to
withdraw from contracts” if its efforts fail. With a deficit of $100 million as
a result of the corruption scandal, “FIFA is killing the golden goose. They are
realizing that,” Mr. Ruggie said in an expression of hope that FIFA would act
on his advice on how to apply the UN human rights principles.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a syndicated
columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Egyptian law enforcement authorities and the Egyptian
Football Association (EFA), in a reflection of fears that stadia in Egypt could
once more emerge as platforms for anti-government protest, have extended a ban
on spectators attending matches that has been in place for much of the last
five years.

The decision dashed expectations that the ban would be
lifted in February with a new competition season. It comes against the backdrop
of repeated Egyptian poor performance in international tournaments that many
blame on the absence of fan support at matches.

Sports minister Khaled Abdel-Aziz used last month’s jihadist
attacks in Paris as well as the cancellation of an international soccer match
in Germany because of an alleged threat by the Islamic State to justify
continued closure of Egyptian stadia.

“There’s no need to be hurried on fans’ return as the world
is on the edge of a cliff,” Mr. Abdel-Aziz said.

Egypt has failed to suppress its own jihadist insurgency in
the remote Sinai that has also sparked a number of attacks in Cairo and other
cities. The insurgency has been fuelled by the military’s brutal tactics as
well as years of social and economic neglect of the Bedouin population in the
north of the peninsula.

The decision to keep stadia closed constitutes a rejection
of demands of some of the government’s key supporters in the business community
who had called for a reversal of the ban. “The absence of football fans is a
failure for Egypt and the interior and youth ministries. People are bored with
politics now, but they never bore of football. Fans must attend matches again,
but without new incidents. Matches are boring without fans,” billionaire Naguib
Sawiris said last month.

Authorities have struggled with multiple options to enhance
security in stadia that would have involved a possible replacement of Egypt’s
hated security forces with private security firms some of which are owned by
retired military officers and the introduction of security technology such as
cameras and an electronic ticketing system.

Disagreement over who would pay for enhanced security has
complicated efforts to lift the ban. So have differences between the interior
and the sports ministry as has Turkey’s experience with electronic ticketing that
fans viewed as a way for the government to regain political control of stadia
and identify dissenters. The Turkish attempt sparked a fan boycott that lead to
a dramatic drop in match attendance.

The issue of spectator attendance has put the government of
general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in a bind. If opening up stadia
bares political risk, so does continued closure. The rival, militant,
well-organized, and street battle-hardened soccer fan groups of storied Cairo clubs
Al Ahli SC and Al Zamalek SC insisted in a rare joint statement that the crowd
ban be lifted immediately.

Deliberate or unwittingly lax imposition of stadium security
measures by security forces resulted twice in the past four years in scores of
deaths. Seventy-two Al Ahli died in February 2012 in a politically loaded brawl
in Port Said that had the hallmarks of security forces deliberately looking the
other way. Three years later 20 Zamalek fans were killed in a stampede at a
Cairo stadium as the result of poor crowd control. Soccer fans are on trial in
a number of court cases related to the two incidents as well as other protests.

Both incidents highlighted an urgent need for security sector
reform in Egypt. The interior ministry, which is responsible for police and
security forces, has however so far successfully fended off calls for a
thorough overhaul.

Al Ahli’s Ultras Ahlawy and Zamalek’s Ultras White Knights
issued their statement after the two groups attended a handball match without
incident. "Today, at Ahi's Abdullah bin Faisal court, fans decided to
teach (authorities) an effective lesson. Everyone witnessed the presence of the
largest sets of fans with few metres separating them and not a single problem
occurred although there wasn't any security," the two groups said on Facebook.

Thousands of hard-core supporters of Al Ahli and Al Zamalek
have for months attended their clubs’ training sessions to demonstrate that it
was not them but the security forces that were responsible for repeated violent
incidents.

The fans insisted in their statement that they were capable
of handling security themselves. “Every time the fans take responsibility of
their own safety, things pass very smoothly… The fans trust themselves and
their ability to organize themselves. It's not our fault that some parties are
not able to carry out their duties," they said in a snide at security
forces and the interior ministry.

The notion of fans handling their own security is anathema
to a regime that allows for no uncontrolled public space. Jihadist targeting of
stadia in France, Germany, Iraq and Nigeria moreover gives the government a
legitimate excuse in an environment in which security forces are as much part
of the solution as they are part of the problem.

Allowing fans to shoulder responsibility for security is also
a no-go for the government given the fact that the ultras played a key role in
the 2011 popular revolt that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and most
subsequent anti-government protests.

Militant soccer fans further formed the backbone of student
protests against the government of Mr. Al Sisi, who in 2013 staged a coup
against Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first and only democratically elected
government.

Mr. Al Sisi has since then brutally suppressed Mr. Morsi’s
Muslim Brotherhood as well as all other expressions of dissent. He squashed the
student protests by arresting hundreds, if not thousands, and turning
universities into security fortresses.

“The ban on spectators is uniting rival fan groups. We have
a common cause in fighting for our right to return to stadiums. This is an
opportunity for the government to reach out to frustrated youth. They shouldn’t
waste it,” said one ultra.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

As the threat from Islamic State (also known as IS or ISIS
or by its Arabic acronym of Daesh) continued to grow, US-led coalition forces
intensified their aerial attacks on IS militants and strategic installations in
Syria and Iraq, in a concerted effort to destroy and degrade the self-styled
caliphate. However, far from caving in, IS has expanded its territorial reach
by moving across the Mediterranean Sea into Libya's coastal region, the Sahel
and West Africa.

Some scholars argue that the ability of IS to attract
foreign fighters as well as idealistic Muslims from across the globe willing to
become cannon fodder in suicide missions at home, make it a lethal force and
very dangerous to any government willing to confront it. These analysts say
that the militants' ideology has been fuelled by the austere and puritanical
interpretation of Islam by Saudi Arabia, a country which has significantly
advanced Salafi-Wahhabi beliefs (a return to Islam as espoused by the first
three generations of Muslims who are collectively known as the salaf).

German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, in a rare attack by a
Western official, accused Saudi Arabia recently of financing extremist mosques
and communities in the West that constitute a security risk and warned that it
must stop. “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away
is over,” Gabriel said in a German newspaper interview. “Wahhabi mosques all
over the world are financed by Saudi Arabia. Many Islamists who are a threat to
public safety come from these communities in Germany,” he said.

Algerian author and columnist Kamal Daoud wrote in The New
York Times recently that the penchant of IS for beheading, killing, stoning,
and amputating victims; and despising women and non-Muslims, mirrors the
practice of Saudi Arabia. “The kingdom relied on an alliance with a religious
clergy that produces, legitimises, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the
ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on," Daoud declared.

The difference was that Saudi Arabia, governed by a
labyrinthine ruling family-religious complex, was less crude in the way it
presented itself to the global community. Daoud asserted that Saudi Arabia was
what IS rule could look like once it had settled in and discarded its jihadist
and expansionist tendencies.

Mainstream Muslim scholars, including those in Southeast
Asia, have long warned that Wahhabism threatens other versions of Islam in
countries where the Muslims are either a majority or a minority. British author
and former intelligence officer Alastair Crooke believes that IS has undermined
the legitimacy of the Saudi ruling family by returning to the rigours of the
18th century alliance between the founding fathers of modern Saudi Arabia and
the fundamentalist Sunni preacher Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab who rejected
as innovation everything that had been introduced after the salaf.

To be sure, IS in its present reiteration, was not created
by Saudi Arabia; it was forged in the wake of the US toppling of Saddam Hussein
in 2003 by among others the disbandment of Saddam Hussein's army, whose senior
officers were mostly Sunnis who already had Islamist networks; the insurgency
and civil war between Iraqi Shias and Sunnis that continues to this day; and
the morphing of Al-Qaeda in Iraq into ISIS, which was in turn energised by
civil strife in Syria and evolved into IS.

These militant groups expanded and consolidated under the
umbrella of IS, culminating in the singular act of declaring a caliphate that
covers Iraq and the Levant (which includes Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine
and Syria). IS challenges Saudi Arabia for the allegiance of Sunnis across the
Middle East. The group’s ultimate objective is to set up the first major
caliphate since the demise of the last caliph with the breaking up of the
Ottoman Empire by Western imperial powers in the wake of the First World War.
IS strives to spread Salafi-Islamic rule across the globe.

Conscious of the enormous political and strategic fallout
from IS’ affinity with Saudi Arabia’s religious, social and moral system as
well as other forms of association with IS (such as the use of Saudi secondary
school books in Mosul, Iraq, after its capture by IS in 2014), the Saudi
government has come to view the militants as a threat. It has over the years
condemned militants led by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and IS leader Abu
Bakr al Baghdadi.

In response to the November 2015 bloody rampage in Paris,
the Saudi rulers have called on the international community to "eradicate
this (referring to IS) dangerous and destructive plague". Saudi Arabia
clearly does not want the world to identify the kingdom’s puritan
interpretation of Islam with IS and jihadism despite the fact that it has
served as a breeding ground for ever more virulent strands of the faith.

That said, it was King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, whose
mother was a descendant of Abdul Wahhab, who advocated modernity in the
conservative kingdom while at the same time launching Wahhabism’s global
proselytisation campaign on the back of the huge cash revenues earned in the
wake of the 1973 oil embargo that sent oil prices skyrocketing. Some reasoned
that Faisal's campaign was initially payback for the support of the ulama
(religious scholars) in a protracted power struggle with his brother, King Saud
that ultimately secured him the throne.

British author and religious scholar Karen Armstrong
suggests that IS may have over-reached itself with its unsustainable policies
and jihadist philosophy. A majority of Sunnis and Shias reject what IS stands
for. Armstrong notes that Saudi Arabia, with its impressive counter-terrorist
resources, has already thwarted IS attacks in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states nonetheless have made clear that dealing with IS does not top
their priorities. The kingdom and its Gulf allies, bogged down in an
intractable war in Yemen viewed by the Saudis as a proxy war against Iran, have
effectively withdrawn militarily from the US-led campaign against IS.

The key to removing the challenge from IS has to be the
realisation that the terror group’s appeal is not its alleged goal of an
atavistic return to the glorious past of Islam, as Armstrong put it. Nor is Islam
at the core of its multiple conflicts. The current appeal of IS is the
opportunity it offers the socially, economically and ethnically disenfranchised
to revolt and its ability with the help of technological advances to take the
battle to historically new levels. Military defeat of IS will not soothe the
anger of the disenfranchised. Addressing their concerns will.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.Mushahid Ali is a Senior Fellow in RSIS.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak with Prime
Minister David Cameron at an FA Cup final

By James M. Dorsey

A $400 million sale by a senior member of the UAE ruling
family of a 13 percent stake in Manchester City FC to China Media Capital
(CMC), a subsidiary of China Media Group Corporation (CMG), a state-backed
investment conglomerate, highlights the importance of soccer in the two
countries’ ambitions to project themselves on the international stage.

The sale, which values Manchester City at $3 billion, puts
to bed any suggestion that Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahayan’s original $400
million acquisition in 2008 of the then troubled English club was an act of
vanity. It further underscores the UAE’s development from what Bloomberg news
called the Switzerland of the Gulf to its military and diplomatic Sparta.

The sale is part of a bid to employ the UAE’s financial
muscle to project the Gulf state despite its small population and loose federal
structure as a major military, political and diplomatic power capable of
marshalling its armed forces, foreign service and ruling family to shape
politics and policies far beyond its borders. The sale also signals UAE
intentions to further expand into China and cement relations with a global
behemoth.

City Football Group (CFG), which owns clubs in New York and
Melbourne alongside Manchester City, said in a statement
that “the deal will create an unprecedented platform for the growth of City
Football Group clubs and companies in China and internationally, borne out of
CFG’s ability to provide a wealth of industry expertise and resources to the
rapidly developing Chinese football industry.”

The deal puts into perspective Manchester City’s earlier
decision to appoint its former player, Sun Jihai, as its ambassador to China
and to include him in the hall of fame at Manchester’s National Football
Museum, a move that initially raised eyebrows in the British soccer community.

China last year stressed the importance it attributes to
soccer domestically as well as internationally with the unveiling of a 50-point plan to turn
the country into a football giant. In a first step, Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao
FC won the Asian Football Championship.

The plan made soccer a mandatory part of China’s school
curriculum, pledged to establish 50,000 soccer schools and multiple academies over
the next decade, and to set up a soccer lottery that would help fund the sport’s
development. The plan also envisions professionalization of the Chinese
Football Association (CFA), by separating it from China’s ports bureaucracy but
not from Chinese politics.

Taiwanese soccer scholar Tien-Chin Tan argues that Chinese
leaders see their country’s poor soccer performance as a “slap in its leader’s
face” against the backdrop on China being a top scorer in Olympic competitions.

The Chinese emphasis on soccer, alongside the hosting of
mega events like various Olympic games, further reflects President Xi Jinping’s
personal passion first expressed in 2011 during a meeting with South Korean
officials even before he became his country’s leader. Mr. Xi said that his
three personal ambition were for China to qualify for the World Cup, host the
event and, ultimately win it.

The Manchester City deal follows the adding of Le Sports, a
subsidiary of China’s largest online video company, LeTV, to the list of Dutch
club AFC Ajax’s Chinese sponsors, which includes Huawei, Sengled, and CST. The
agreement calls for the establishment of an Ajax training camp in China.

“Football is now at a fascinating and critical stage of
development in China. We see unprecedented growth opportunities in both its
development as an industry, being China’s most watched sport, and its
inspirational role bringing people of all ages together with a shared passion,”
said CMG chairman Li Ruigang. “We and our consortium partner CITIC Capital also
see this investment as a prime opportunity for furthering the contribution of
China to the global football family.”

The sale has significant economic benefits, including
opening up to the UAE what is likely to become the world’s foremost soccer
market involving opportunities to market its Manchester City and other brands
in China, capitalize on opportunities arising from the country’s soccer
development plan, and the English Premier League’s increasing popularity in
China.

The degree to which soccer allows the UAE, which packages
its repression of dissent at home and fierce opposition to any expression of
political Islam that translates into pressuring other countries into adopting
its hard line views, to exert leverage and project itself as a force of enlightenment
is obvious in public statements by its representatives as well as media reports
on its diplomatic moves.

The
Guardian reported last month that Manchester City chairman Khaldoon
Al-Mubarak, a close business associate of UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed
bin Sultan Al Nahyan, had warned the UK that his country would block
multi-billion dollar arms deals, halt investment in Britain and suspend
intelligence cooperation if Prime Minister David Cameron failed to crack down
on the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Success on the battlefield may be the easy part,” the UAE’s
ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, said in an article in
Foreign Policy, entitled ‘A
Vision for a Moderate, Modern Muslim World. Mr.
Al Otaiba was referring to the UAE’s military engagements, first and foremost
among which Yemen in which some 50 Emirati soldiers have so far died. “

We know that to win, we must not only defeat what we are
against, but we must also define what we as Muslims and Arabs are for,” Mr. Al
Otaiba added.

He said that the UAE was “testing a new vision for the
region — an alternative, future-oriented ideology. It is a path guided by the
true tenets of Islam: respect, inclusion, and peace. It empowers women,
embraces diversity, encourages innovation, and welcomes global engagement.”

In many respects, the UAE’s social and economic achievements
as well as the projection of its military prowess in countries like Yemen and
Libya is beyond doubt. Nonetheless, the UAE’s achievements are also geared to
cementing autocratic family rule.

Soccer with Manchester City in the lead, alongside high
expenditure on public relations, has allowed the ambitious Gulf state to
project itself as a modern, enlightened state rather than a repressive,
autocratic regime that understands that economic and social development coupled
with the ability to punch internationally above its weight is key to the
survival of its regime.

The sale to China of a stake in Manchester City strengthens
the UAE’s strategy and adds an arrow to its quiver. It aligns the UAE’s global
ambitions with those of China and strengthens perceptions of the UAE as a
global player.

Ian Smith of Sports Integrity Matters underlined soccer’s
importance to the UAE and other Gulf states when he noted that “nothing happens
without there being a political overtone to it because of the nature in which these
countries are governed.” Harnessing soccer for political interests, Mr. Smith
said, stems both from the sport’s utility as well as a “pervasiveness (in the
Gulf) that there is no matter that the government should not be involved in.”

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Qatar’s World Cup hero becomes invisible man

by David Harding

AFP/File / Fabrice CoffriniMohammed bin Hammam, pictured on May 29, 2011, has become Qatar's invisible man -- tainted by the scandal that has engulfed world football

This should be a time of celebration for Mohamed bin Hammam, the man who achieved the impossible and brought the World Cup to Qatar.

Doha (AFP)

His beloved Al Rayyan football team have just set a Qatar Stars League record by winning their first 10 games of the season to dominate the standings.

And on Wednesday, five years will have passed since his spectacular achievement in persuading FIFA to award sport’s most watched event for the tiny desert Gulf state in one of the most controversial votes in sporting history.

But the 66-year-old tycoon has become Qatar’s invisible man — tainted by the scandal that has engulfed world football.

Since his spectacular fall began in 2011, when his decision to challenge Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency led to him being banned for life from football, bin Hammam has become a symbol of the corruption crisis which has rocked the world body.

Although he did not play an official role in Qatar’s bid, bin Hammam stands accused — though not proven — of helping to secure the World Cup through payments to officials, including more than $1.5 million to Caribbean powerbroker Jack Warner.

– Evidence wanted –

Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper alleged that the Qatari entrepreneur made secret payments ahead of the 2010 vote for the World Cup and, later to buy votes during his disastrous presidential campaign.

From being at the very centre of world football, including as head of the Asian Football Confederation, by the end of 2012 bin Hammam had disappeared without trace.

But his presence still casts a shadow over world football.

Earlier this month, Swiss investigators examining how Qatar won the race for 2022, said they would “particularly welcome” a statement from bin Hammam.

There was no public response.

Bin Hammam would like to talk, it is said, but he has been advised not to give his side of the story, at least not yet, according to sports officials in the region.

Despite the silence, bin Hammam’s presence is felt.

“It’s not that he’s been outcast, it’s just that it is in nobody’s interest that he is seen to be in contact with them,” James M. Dorsey, an academic and writer who follows Middle East football, told AFP.

It is believed however that bin Hammam retains the support of former colleagues within the football administration world, who remain on speaking terms with him.

Although he is no longer thought to travel outside Qatar, bin Hammam regularly attends Al Rayyan matches, though missed their record-breaking win at the weekend, and is still a successful businessman.

As well as being a football administrator, he is said to be genuinely passionate about the sport.

Bin Hammam — who was born in the year Qatar first exported oil — remains in the construction industry in which made his fortune.

He heads a construction business with some 2,000 employees and friends say he inspires great loyalty among those who work for him.

“Qatar will not hand him over (to investigators),” added Dorsey, acknowledging the debt many still feel is owed bin Hammam within the Gulf.

AFP/File / A general view taken on November 13, 2014 shows Khalifa Stadium in Doha which is undergoing complete renovation in preparation to host some of the matches for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar

In Qatar, many still view him as a man who achieved the impossible and, like the country itself, has been unfairly tarnished in the fallout.

There is talk of his generosity and his gesture in meeting the medical costs for one employee who suffered a heart attack.

Other Qataris and officials in the region talk of his modesty, calm and even shyness.

Bin Hammam may have to overcome that last trait though, as he may well be forced centre stage again during the investigations into 2022, by Switzerland’s Attorney General and US federal prosecutors.

Qatar’s position on the investigations is that they have always cooperated fully, while denying any charges of corruption.

But any request from investigators for evidence from bin Hammam could test Qatar’s resolve.

“There’s obviously no interest in making more of a scapegoat than he already is, but circumstances can change,” added Dorsey.

“Qatar is not in the driving seat anymore, it has lost control of the issue.”

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Words but no actions. That is Amnesty International’s
evaluation of promised Qatari labour reforms on the fifth year of the awarding
of the 2022 World Cup hosting rights to the Gulf state.

Qatar’s failure to enact wide-ranging reforms heightens the
risk of its hosting rights being called into question against a backdrop of
legal investigations into the integrity of its bid and world soccer body FIFA
presidential elections that could spur increased pressure on the Gulf state in
FIFA’s bid to put a massive corruption scandal that involves Qatar behind it.

In a statement,
Amnesty researcher Mustafa Qadri, asserted that “too little has been done to
address rampant migrant labour abuse. Qatar’s persistent labour reform delays
are a recipe for human rights disaster... Unless action is taken – and soon –
then every football fan who visits Qatar in 2022 should ask themselves how they
can be sure they are not benefiting from the blood, sweat and tears of migrant
workers.”

Mr. Qadri noted further that FIFA had “played its part in
this sorry performance” given that it was aware of the labour issues when it
awarded the World Cup to FIFA. He said FIFA needed to work with Qatar and
business to address the issue.

Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, a frontrunner in next February’s
presidential election, has warned that FIFA could revisit Qatar’s hosting
rights if it failed to follow through on promises to improve the living and
working conditions of migrant workers working on World Cup-related construction
sites. He said human and workers’ rights were important criteria in the
awarding of the tournament, which together with the Olympic Games is the world’s
foremost sporting mega event.

“As an Asian, I am asking that they (Qatar) have to abide by
that. I have seen suggestions from Qatar especially in terms of workers’ rights
that they want to move ahead but FIFA has to guarantee that they do so. Because
that is the basis of how we should be. Football can be a right conduit to serve
the society and that for me is the most important thing,” Prince Ali said.

FIFA’s corruption scandal has so far led to the indictment in
the United States of 14 serving and former FIFA executives as well as suspension
of the group’s president, Sepp Blatter, and European soccer chief Michel Platini.

It has also sparked a Swiss investigation into the awarding
in December 2010 of the tournament to Qatar and the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
The US Department of Justice proceedings could be expanded to include the
Qatari bid, which has been tarred by allegations of corruption and bribery.

Qatar initially built goodwill by responding positively to
criticism by trade union and human rights activists who described its regime
for migrant worker force that constitutes a majority of the Gulf state’s
population as ‘modern slavery.’ Qatar’s kafala or sponsorship regime puts
employees at the mercy of their employers.

The goodwill has since largely been wasted by Qatar failing
to forcefully follow through on promised reforms. In a first positive fallout
from the awarding of the tournament, Qatar broke with the Gulf practice of
barring entry to the country or imprisoning its critics. Instead, it opened its
doors to the likes of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the International Trade
Union Confederation (ITUC).

As a result, the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery&
Legacy alongside Qatar Foundation and Qatar Rail adopted labour standards
applicable for all their contracts that significantly improved workers’ living
and working conditions but stopped short of abolishing the kafala system. That
may help to assuage FIFA’s next president but will not convince Qatar’s critics
who argue that the standards need to be enshrined in national law rather than
only applicable to a limited number of Qatari institutions. It raises questions
about Qatari sincerity and the value of engagement.

In its statement, Amnesty noted that Qatar has backtracked
on promises to implement limit changes by the end of this year. Among other
things, Qatar has postponed until the end of next year expanding its labour
inspector force as well as limited changes of the kafala system. The changes moreover
fail to abolish one of the most onerous facets of kafala, the need for an
employee to obtain his or her employer’s consent to change jobs.

A series of related events have called into question the effectivity
or the sustainability of the kafala system and cast a further shadow over how
Qataris, who constitute a minority of the Gulf state’s population, approach
communal affairs.

Qatar last month introduced a long delayed wage protection
system that requires businesses to pay workers on time by direct bank deposits.
Yet, several hundred employees of Drake & Scull in a rare work stoppage
that is banned in Qatar went on strike last week in a dispute over unpaid
wages.

Moreover, heavy rains that last month led to flooding,
including of Qatar’s newly opened $15 billion Hamad International Airport,
prompted an investigation into the quality of construction and a temporary ban
on contractors and workers leaving the country.

Qatar appeared to be underlining de facto segregation in a
move that cast a further shadow over its sincerity about labour reform with Doha’s
Central Municipal Council set to vote on barring single men from entering malls
on at least one day a week. Most of Qatar’s migrant workers arrive leaving
their families behind in their home countries. Under the proposal, they would
be unable to visit malls on the one day a week that they are off.

Malls are alongside sports facilities Qatar’s main venue for
public relaxation and entertainment. In another facet of de facto segregation,
those facilities are off limits to migrant workers. Qatari institutions that
have adopted improved standards like the supreme committee are building separate
sports facilities for workers in cities that are exclusively built for them.

While Qatar’s national soccer team has recently performed
well and invested heavily in grooming potential foreign players, Guardian
reporter Robert Booth noted recently that the Gulf state has ignored a
potentially significant talent pool in its own backyard: soccer-crazy migrant
workers.

Qatar “should scout the migrant camps for football stars,
make the best of these citizens and throw them into national sides. It would be
a statement of intent,” Mr. Booth said.

The politics of its citizenry being a majority in its own
country is what complicates labour reform that many Qatar’s fear would open a
Pandora’s Box of foreigners demanding more rights that ultimately could threaten
Qatari control of their culture, society, and state. Wasting goodwill and the
calling into question of the sincerity of Qatar’s declared intentions threatens
however to deprive the Gulf state of the time and space it needs to enact
reforms its critics were willing to grant it.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile